The Civil Aviation Ministry plans to award contracts for six airport projects – Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and Guwahati to private players on a PPP model before the end of this year. The Ministry is in talks with related agencies for finalising bidding criteria, documents and consultants to execute a privatisation plan that proposes 74% equity in the airports to selected private companies and 26% for Airports Authority of India (AAI). If implemented, this will be the second round of airport privatisation in India?the first one had privatised airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Greenfield airports were built in Bangalore and Hyderabad at a total cost of Rs.4,000cr. GVK now owns the Bangalore airport while GMR built and runs the Hyderabad airport.
